Had the sausage pizza from Home Run Inn on Archer ave on tuesday. Their "Customer Apreciation day" special. Salty and tasteless sausage. Definetly not their regular sausage that they served in the past. This store has me totally frustrated. Whenever I eat there the pizza is differant. I have been a customer of Home Run since 1950 and remember it as Chicago's best. The current management (corporate) either doesn't give a shit or is incompetent. They sure as hell aren't checking on their stores. This was,after 64 years, my final pizza from Home Run

I must be the only person on the planet that does not get Poutine. I recently visited Quebec City in Canada and there is a fast food restaurant, Ashtons, where folks line up to get Poutine. First time I had ordered it and I just don't understand why this is so popular anywhere for that matter. It was just a bunch of French fries drowning in brown gravy with cheese curds that would squeak while passing down your throat.

I would certainly not order this and I cant understand why a restaurant is dedicated to this dish.

I must be nuts or something or my taste buds are not developed. I just don't get it.

Lunch at I Dream of Falafel, Clinton and Monroe. So it's a cold day, and this place is right around the corner from my office. I have co-workers who've gladly eaten their fare regularly. Got the falafel rice plate. The falafels should be donated to the NHL. The rice made Panda Express look like LSC. The sides were… well, in the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king. And Haifa's right across the street. Never again.

third coast foodie wrote:Yesterday was a very good day with some very bad food.

It started as we were prepping for the sox game at Schallers Pump. Of course I love Schallers and will go there many more times but I always struggle each and every time when I hear their list of beers; Bud, Miller, Heineken, Michelob Ultra. A couple few Ultras in we ordered some fries. Warm golden spears of mealy centered bland frozen limp imitations of fries. Terrible, no one ate more than two. Not yet beat we had the but steak med rare and hash browns - well done. Three charred, tough, and flavorless steaks came out, cooked to a med rare center with a nicely 'barked' exterior but with no flavor of smoke, meat or fat accompanied by a plate of hash browns with no onions, spice, or flavor to speak of. No one complained and we were all happy to pay the 9 bucks for dinner served by the wonderful members of the Schaller family washed down with ice cold domestic swill. I normally order the prime rib, or meatloaf and will return to such in the future. While much of the menu is ok I wonder what they were serving 125 years ago and think it must have been superior.

Schaller's food almost never gets a mention anywhere and when it is mentioned, what people say is almost never good. Is there anything on their menu that is worth eating? Or is it all about the history of the place?

third coast foodie wrote:While much of the menu is ok I wonder what they were serving 125 years ago and think it must have been superior.

I think 125 years ago Schaller's was serving Junk. In the 1940s and '50s they served Ambrosia.

David Hammond wrote:Schaller's food almost never gets a mention anywhere and when it is mentioned, what people say is almost never good. Is there anything on their menu that is worth eating? Or is it all about the history of the place?

Last year I enjoyed a cup of pea soup at Schaller's.

I think it was home made. It was certainly better than the cheeseburger and fries that followed.

I suppose I should explain what I wrote above. For most of its existence, Schaller's was literally surrounded by a large brewery that had many names over the years. From 1883, when both the tavern and brewery opened, to 1909, the brewery was run by the Junk family. From 1937 to 1959 it was known as the Ambrosia Brewery (and yes, one of their beers was Nectar).

Had an unremarkable meal at Schwa. Two pretty bad bites - first bite was a white chocolate shell filled with a really salty liquid that was supposed to be pastrami flavored but was just a weirdly seasoned salty liquid and a dessert bite was supposed to be a white chocolate tellegio truffle but tasted exactly like stale cardboard. Ugh.

With the snow on monday and very hungover from the super american football match I had a taste for rueben. Not wanting to go far I went next door to Halsted Street Deli on Wells. I figured how bad could it be? Can't be that bad? I knew I was in trouble when they through the pile of "Manny's" corned beef into the microwave. I couldn't even bite the pieces of corned beef off. It was so chewy and fatty they just slid out of the sandwich. Coupled with some flavorless kraut and extremely sweet 1000 island, not only was this thing a complete disaster, it was absolutely disgusting. It's all my fault. I kicked my own ass after I took a bite.

At an out of town Chinese restaurant, the Hunan Imperial dish has two components, both of which are supposed to be spicy, but aren't (I even asked for extra spicy).But that's not a worst: the shrimp component had a sauce which tasted like ketchup, sugar and raw minced onion.Bleah.

What is patriotism, but the love of good things we ate in our childhood?
-- Lin Yutang

A pork and orzo plate at the relatively new GRK location at 111 W Monroe. Granted, I'm pickier because I'm of Greek ancestry, but this was garbage. Rock hard pork, tasteless hummus, weird canned olives in the orzo. Doubly sad because it's my office building and it's a place besides the institutional cafeteria to get lunch without leaving the building in inclement weather.

For the price I paid, I'd have rather gone to the cafeteria and bought $8+tax worth of cookies and chips from the vending machine, and had money left over to buy a McDonald's Apple Pie for my drive home.

OK let's be honest. It's not just restaurants that can serve up a bad meal. I'll fess up.

Worst thing I've eaten lately was my attempt to make baby back ribs at home. Texture was good, just a little resistance when chewing them, but boy did I screw up the seasoning. Way too salty. I literally rinsed them off under the kitchen faucet to try to get rid of some of the seasoning. Sheesh! Better luck next time.

Sadly brunch today at Uncommon Ground on Clark. I was meeting a friend who lives nearby and we simply wanted an early brunch sitting outside in the sun. We ordered basics - a side order of bacon, eggs for each of us (sunny side up for her, scambled for me), whole grain toast for her, sourdough for me. When the food arrived after a bit of a wait, nothing was even warm, the toast had barely seen a toaster and the two breads were indistinguishable - the waitress said they gave us two whole grains by mistake then returned with an equally non- toasted plate of "toast" that she said was sourdough but I sure could not taste it. The bacon was cooked only about half way with raw fat on a good portion of each piece and the 'crispy potatoes" were not. It was rather stunning to see every aspect of the meal fail ... we ate a little, drank our juice and tea and left.

I had previously found them a nice spot for a very casual cocktail and burger ... but now I'm crossing them off my list for future stops.

Do I have to preface this by defending my penchant for burritos? I'll save the painful authenticity debate for another day. And I guess its one of those "any pizza is good pizza..." rules for me but about burritos and not pizza. There are exceptions to this rule apparently.

And what did I expect eating at 9 PM in that neighborhood? Well I was in a hurry. And I frequent and quite adore my local Authentaco, which last I checked is basically in the same neighborhood as the flagship. I'd never been and thought maybe I could trust to get at least a decent product from a brand that does so much right at their new shop. I know Picante pre-dates Authentaco by many years and its popularity in the neighborhood is obvious, but the margin between the two products of the two shops is astounding. Apples and oranges I guess.

So firstly, how did that take 20 minutes to prepare? It spent most of its life sitting on the flattop, pre-assembled, lettuce first, wilting into a slurry. I know, I watched the whole damn thing go down. Steak out of the hot holder, par for the course... but the stuff was held so long it actually had been rendered pot roast- tender, which could have been somewhat pleasurable if not for the acrid bitterness of whatever unclean surface they cooked the stuff. And yeah, like many of its class, top loaded with lettuce (paste) and bottom heavy with all the beans and sour cream. Chipotle can somehow evenly distribute the ingredients, why does your corner taqueria f this up every time?

Next time its back to Authentaco for sure. Maybe they need to do hand made flour tortillas so I can get my burrita jones.

Pastrami sandwich at Max & Benny's. Aside from the fact that I'd ordered pastrami and chopped liver, the pastrami was tough and greasy, add if it had been reheated past warm. I was tired and feeling very non confrontational, didn't complain except to make sure the chopped liver wasn't on the bill.

Everything else was very good. But at that price ($11.99 for a sandwich served just with a pickle and two tablespoons of slaw), I expected better.

What is patriotism, but the love of good things we ate in our childhood?
-- Lin Yutang